Divorce fucking blows.
I’ve spent the past eighteen months feeling angry at Kara for leaving me. Even though we’d hit a rough patch, I would have never done that to her. But there are times when…I…fuck, I might be…relieved.
Shame has me turning away from the mirror. I hate it when thoughts like that creep into my head. I’m not relieved that my marriage blew up in smoke. I’m saddened.
And relieved.
No, I’m devastated.
But also relieved.
A silent groan lodges in my throat. I march into the bedroom and grab some clean clothes from the dresser. Fine. I have to concede to my traitorous subconscious—that last year with Kara had been pretty fucking awful.
Just the last year? my asshole brain mocks.
All right, maybe it was more than a year. Maybe I’d felt us growing apart long before that. Truthfully, the strain started after the twins were born. Other than some possessiveness and unwarranted jealousy on Kara’s part, and lots of traveling and some laziness on mine, our first two years of marriage were a blast. It wasn’t until the girls came along that Kara decided every single thing I did was absolutely wrong and that shit needed to be done her way—no highway option.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming my kids for the tension in the marriage. I love my girls. I wouldn’t give ’em up for the world.
Buzzzzz.
I brighten as the landline on my nightstand gives a loud buzz. Speaking of my girls…
I grab the phone and press the button to contact the doorman. “Tommy, my man,” I say cheerfully. “Please tell me there are two lovely ladies on their way up.”
“Three,” he corrects, and I hear the smile in his voice. “They just got on the elevator.”
“Thanks.” I hang up and tug my sweatpants into place, then throw a Toronto hoodie over my head and hurry toward the front door. The floor-to-ceiling windows that span the massive main room sparkle in the early morning sunshine. It’s a gorgeous day, blue skies and yellow sunshine on my rug. In the warmth of my apartment, I can pretend that it’s a summer day and not freeze-your-balls-off cold out there.
I’m wired with anticipation as I wait for the knock. I have the girls until tomorrow morning, at which point their mom will pick them up so they can spend the day with their grandparents in Markham, a nice suburb northwest of here.
I’d been brutally disappointed when I found out I wouldn’t have them for the whole day tomorrow. I wanted to point out that they see Kara’s parents every Friday for lunch, a tradition that started when they were still in diapers, but arguing with my ex is about as effective as conversing with a wall. She always wins arguments. Always.
“DADDY!!” two voices shriek the second I open the door.
In a nanosecond, I’m bending down to scoop both girls into my arms. Two pairs of little hands wrap around my neck. Two sets of beautiful, heart-shaped faces peer up at me in delight. And two mouths release squeals of laughter when I smack kisses all over their chubby cheeks.
“Oh, I missed you guys!” Emotion is thick in my throat as I hug my four-year-old daughters tight to my chest.
“Missed you too, Daddy!” June yells.
“Me too!” Libby pipes up.
“Yeah? How’s my Junebug doing?” I ruffle June’s dark hair before doing the same to her twin. “And my Libby-Lu?”
“Mommy got us new hats!”
“With pom-poms!”
I gasp. “No way! Why aren’t you wearing them?”
“Mommy says it’s not cold ’nuff yet,” June informs me.
I stifle an irritated curse. Of course. Kara is an expert in all things. I guess that includes determining the precise point of Toronto’s seasonal change in which our children are allowed to wear their hats. To distract myself from my annoyance, I swing the girls in my arms again, eliciting more happy squeals.
“Would you put them down, please?” a sharp voice asks from the door. “They haven’t had their breakfast yet and all that spinning around will make them nauseous.”
The curse that’s jammed in my throat is now a string of expletives that are dying to fly out. Instead, I take a breath and then gently set my daughters on their feet.
“RUFUS!” June shouts when she catches sight of the dog, who’s just rounded the corner to see what all the commotion in the front hall is about. His delayed entrance only highlights what a shit guard dog he’d make. Lazy bastard.
As the twins scamper off to pet their dog, I turn to my ex-wife and force myself to make eye contact. And there she stands, her glossy brown hair streaming down her shoulders in bouncy curls, her lithe body decked out in jeans and a leather jacket, a bright wool scarf setting off the color in her cheeks. Divorce obviously agrees with her. Or maybe it's her new boyfriend, the dentist. Good old Dentist Dan, the man who gets to spend more time with my kids than I do.
But who’s bitter?
This is the woman who decided I wasn’t good enough to remain a full-fledged member of the family. That my children would be better off seeing Daddy once every couple of weeks. She cast me aside like she does with her designer clothes when she determines that they’re out of style.
Anger curls in my gut. But that’s not how I want this day to go, and it’s not the tone I want to strike with Her Highness. So I force myself to say something nice.
“How’s it going, Kara? You look good.” I’m not lying, either. My ex is still as beautiful as the day I married her.
“I’d say the same for you, but…” Her nose turns up slightly. “Did your razor break?”
I manage a wry grin. “Nah. I’m trying out the rugged look.” I gesture to my beard growth. “What? I’m not pulling it off?”
A reluctant smile tugs at her lips. “Sorry, Matty, but no, you’re not.”
Her use of my nickname causes me to soften a bit. I never know which Kara I’m going to encounter when she shows up—the laughing, easygoing girl I met at twenty-two, or the sharp-tongued, rigid woman who divorced me at twenty-nine.
It still confuses me sometimes, how much she changed. I mean, certain aspects of her personality, which I didn’t always like, were constant throughout our marriage—her pessimism, her candidness, her impatience. But in those early days, she was fun. She took risks, she laughed, she knew how to relax. Somehow those moments of relaxation became less and less frequent, and she became more and more unyielding.
She blames it on me, of course. Says the hockey lifestyle broke us, that I broke us. “I'm tired of being disappointed,” she’d whispered after one of our fights only months before the divorce. I'd missed her parents’ anniversary dinner the night before because the team’s flight was delayed in Michigan thanks to a snowstorm. Fuck, it wasn't like I'd set out to miss an important event, but for Kara, it was just another neon sign that screamed, “My husband neglects me!”
Matthew Eriksson, folks. Chronic disappointer of wives.